Ugandan President To Obama: You Can’t Tell Me How To Run My House

Yesterday Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni responded to President Obama’s denouncement of the anti-homosexuality bill, saying, “You can’t tell me how to run my house.” (That quote is inexact and has been reported in different versions. The audio below is unclear.) Museveni has not yet signed the bill, but some reports say he might do so today. He has also issued a lengthy written response to Obama. Here’s how it begins:

I have seen the statement H.E President Obama of the USA made in reaction to my statement that I was going to sign the anti-homosexual Bill, which I made at Kyankwanzi. Before I react to H.E. Obama’s statement, let me, again, put on record my views on the issue of homo-sexuals (ebitiingwa, bisiyaga in some of our dialects). Right from the beginning of this debate, my views were as follows:

1. I agreed with the MPs and almost all Ugandans that promotion of homosexuality in Uganda must be criminalized or rather should continue to be criminalized because the British had already done that;

2. Those who agreed to become homosexuals for mercenary reasons (prostitutes) should be harshly punished as should those who paid them to be homosexual prostitutes; and

3. Exhibitionism of homosexual behavior must be punished because, in this part of the World, it is forbidden to publicly exhibit any sexual conduct (kissing, etc) even for heterosexuals; if I kissed my wife of 41 years in public, I would lose elections in Uganda.